The sunlight on the garden
Hardens and grows cold,
We cannot cage the minute
Within its nets of gold;
When all is told
We cannot beg for pardon.
Our freedom as free lances
Advances towards its end;
The earth compels, upon it
Sonnets and birds descend;
And soon, my friend,
We shall have no time for dances.
The sky was good for flying
Defying the church bells
And every evil iron
Siren and what it tells:
The earth compels,
We are dying, Egypt, dying
And not expecting pardon,
Hardened in heart anew,
But glad to have sat under
Thunder and rain with you,
And grateful too
For sunlight on the garden.

An truly beautiful poem - the complex, intertwined images building up into
an ominous picture of a world spiralling into war. The superposition of the
large-scale and the highly personal is highly effective, the ending lending
the rest of the poem a new and enhanced perspective. And the poem is lent an
extra poignancy by the knowledge (see the first link) that it was addressed
to the wife who had just left him.
And speaking of complex and intertwined, don't miss the exquisitely crafted
rhyme scheme, the combination of internal and end rhymes having a delight
all their own. The technique of rhyming the last word of a line with the
first word of the next is, incidentally, reminiscent of Joe Haldeman's
"Lines Composed on a Noisy Plane to Atlantic City", in Zelazny's 'Wheel of
Fortune' anthology. Zelazny refers to it as an old Welsh verse form - if
anyone can shed further light on this, do write in.
Notes:
"We are dying, Egypt, dying": echoes Antony's word to Cleopatra in
Act 4 of Antony and Cleopatra.
-- [broken link] http://www.wmich.edu/english/tchg/lit/pms/MacNeice.Sunlight.html
Biography:
MacNeice, Louis:
1907-63, Irish poet. Educated in England, he became a classical scholar
and teacher and later was a producer for the British Broadcasting
Corporation. In the 1930s MacNeice allied himself with a group of poets
of social protest led by W. H. Auden. His later poetry, expressing the
futility of modern life, retains the sparkling wit, ironical flatness of
statement, and colloquial tone of his earlier verse. His volumes of
poetry include Poems,, Springboard (1945), Holes in the
Sky (1948), Ten Burnt Offerings (1952), and Solstices (1961). He also
rendered poetic translations of Aeschylus' Agamemnon (1936) and Goethe's
Faust (1951).
-- [broken link] http://www.encyclopedia.com/printable/07828.html
Links:
Seamus Cooney has an detailed commentary on the poem
[broken link] http://www.wmich.edu/english/tchg/lit/pms/MacNeice.Sunlight.html
Dickinson's 'There's a Certain Slant of Light' has reminiscent imagery
poem #92
And Henley's 'The Rain and the Wind' resonates nicely with the ending
poem #117
As for MacNeice, we've run two of his poems:
poem #18poem #521
-martin

"One of MacNeive's saddest and most beautiful lyics. [MacNeice] once saidthat if forced to choose between sound and sense he would have a slightpreference for [sound]. In this poem the sense seems to be conveyed_through_ the music. The rhyme scheme ... has the effect of dovetailing thelines together and producing a constant sense of echo emphasising thelingering, fading quality of the joys of life which the poem is talkingabout."

Hello. I am Rex Patton, an amateur poet. I have come upon your listing while cruising the -net at work, thus the address: Allstar Mortgage. If you should wish to communicate with me please use this address : I believe that the show of an end-rime being followed by the next initial rime, as in portions of Mr. Loius MacNeice's "Sunlight OnThe Garden", if followed to completion of the piece, is called Serpentine rime. If it is done on every-other-line, it is called Broken Serpentine rime. This would lead me to idenify Mr. MacNeice's example as perhaps being Partial Serpentine rime. Your site is quite lovely and I shall be visiting often. Thank you. Rex Patton. Anderson, Indiana.

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